At around midnight that first night, a messenger arrived with an urgent request for help from Iccius, the Remi leader who had approached Caesar about an alliance. It turned out that the Belgae, having learned of the Remi’s choice to side with Rome, changed the direction of their march to the west to besiege the Remi’s capital at a town called Bibrax. Iccius begged Caesar to send help, since he was not confident that his small force could withstand a siege by a force of the size that was facing him. Caesar responded by sending a detachment from the auxiliary forces, consisting of Numidian javelineers, Cretan archers and Balearic slingers, all missile troops, who left shortly before dawn. Lightly armed, they were able to quickly travel the seven miles to the town, finding it completely blockaded by the Belgae, whose idea of siegecraft was to surround a town with their warriors then use missiles to scour the parapets of the enemy. Apparently their hope was that the warriors holding the town would finally become discouraged and just give up. The Belgae had no conception of siege engines, and Bibrax was built on a steep hill, with the southern approach being an escarpment, which the Belgae did not think to invest. Consequently, it was short work for our auxiliaries to drive the Belgae away from the town, who instead took out their frustration on the surrounding countryside, putting it to the torch. Satisfied that they made their point, the Belgae resumed their march towards our encampment, arriving after nightfall of the same day that they were repulsed from Bibrax, proceeding to build a camp that was so huge that they were required to use signal fires to communicate from one end to the other. Their campfires extended as far as the eye could see, with the nearest end of their camp perhaps a mile on the other side of the small river and even with the eastern end of our camp. Since the terrain was fairly flat and open and we still could not see the far end of their camp, it had to have been more than three miles in length, a fact that, even with our confidence, unnerved us a bit. It even instilled in Caesar a sense of caution, prompting him to decide to give himself more time to judge the fighting qualities of the huge army before us. To that end, the next morning he sent out a number of cavalry patrols that clashed with similar contingents of Belgae presumably sent out by Galba to do the same thing in testing our ability to fight. We were pleasantly surprised when we saw that our cavalry took the measure of their foes in every skirmish they fought that day, and this outcome convinced Caesar to send us out to challenge the Belgae the next morning.
Six Legions marched out of the camp that morning, with the 13th and 14th staying in the camp to guard it. We were in our place on the right wing, with the camp to our right rear and the other Legions arranged roughly perpendicular to the northwest corner of the camp wall. The moment the Belgae saw us march out, they began to stream out of their own camp to face us, with the small river and the morass between us. In order to attack, they would have to cross the morass, with the southern edge of it just within range of our javelins, while the far bank was in range of our artillery. The Belgae formed up just beyond this, whereupon we stood and stared at each other, our side impassively watching the Belgae work themselves up into a frenzy. However, Galba never gave the order to attack, obviously worried about the problem of crossing the swampy ground under fire. Instead they settled for shaking their weapons at us and bellowing promises of all that they would do to us, as first one individual then another among them worked up the courage to dash up to the bank of the river. Standing there, they would yell some insult at us, usually accompanied by the baring of their backside, before scurrying back to the safety of the horde before our artillerymen decided to poke a hole through them. The Belgic army was arrayed in the traditional three wings, except that because of their numbers each wing, consisting of three lines like our own, dwarfed our entire line of six Legions. Still, despite this huge advantage, they refused to advance.
“This is getting boring,” I heard Vibius say, and I had to agree.
It seemed to us that we spent a lot of time standing waiting for Gauls to work up the nerve to attack, and it tended to get monotonous. Because of the immense size of their army, it was difficult for us to keep track of smaller detachments, so it was with some surprise that a courier sent from Sabinus back at the fort at the bridge came galloping up looking for Caesar, who as usual was commanding our wing. He carried a warning that the Belgae had sent scouts about two miles west and found a ford, and were now making for it with a large detachment from the main army, apparently sending men from their third line where we could not see them. Caesar immediately wheeled his horse, and commanding the auxiliary missile troops to follow him, galloped away to head off the danger to our rear, with the cavalry in tow. While this Belgae force crossing the ford was not large enough to defeat us, it was more likely that they would turn to lay waste to the Remi fields that supplied our grain. If that happened we would be forced to move because of lack of food, making stopping them imperative to our overall goal. Caesar and his force reached the ford to find that a small group had indeed made it across, but the bulk of the troops were still on the other side. The water at this spot was waist deep, and Belgae were wading across as quickly as they could, so Caesar ordered the cavalry to deal with the few men who made it to our side as he deployed the auxiliary missile troops, who began firing on the Belgae in the water. There was an immense slaughter at the ford, with our troops standing off at a distance to send a hail of arrows, stones and javelins into the bodies of the warriors trying desperately to get across the river. Bodies began to pile up in the current, the men crossing behind the dead and wounded now having the added difficulty of clambering over the bodies as they tried desperately to close with our missile troops. Soldiers, no matter who they fight for, hate the men who use bows and slings, thinking it a cowardly way of waging war, and no doubt it was this hatred that spurred the Belgae on in their attempt to exact their revenge on our troops. It was less of a skirmish or battle than it was a slaughter, and it was over in less than a third of a watch, ending with the river choked with the bodies of the dead, polluting the water with their blood.